I know I said I wasn’t going to post anything this weekend, but I’ve heard a lot of talk about this and wanted to help disseminate:

Libraries get solicitations and purchase suggestions all the time. A few times a week I’ll get emails from authors or publishers, asking us to buy their books, or from patrons, asking us to buy a book they want to read or that would be a good addition to our collection.

But this week, I (and many other librarians, it turns out) got a cross-over: a message from someone apparently posing as a patron.

I am not providing links out of sheer irritation, and I won’t publish the person’s “name” for privacy reasons, but the email came from someone with the initials M.T., and the text of the message read:

Hi there -

I was searching in the library and trying to find the book [title] by [author], ISBN [isbn] and did not find it.

I heard about it on NPR, BBC America and saw it on Amazon and the author's website at narcissism.ca.

Will you be getting a copy in soon?

With requests like this, I always check our catalog to see if the book is available from another library in my consortium, and I look up the patron to place them hold for it. But this time, I found neither the book nor anyone by this name in our system. But I did read about it on Amazon, so I replied:

Hello-

This does look like and interesting book, so I'd be happy to order it for our collection. I searched for your name in our catalog to place you on reserve for it when it arrives, but did not find a [patron name] listed.

If you can email back your library card number, I'll be sure you are first on the list when the book arrives. Thanks for the suggestion, and take care.

Brian Herzog
Head of Reference
Chelmsford Public Library

I then got a message back saying "Hi Brian - I just moved. I'll be down soon to get my card."

That's when I started seeing other libraries asking about this strange request. I wrote back saying that when they came to get a card, to come to the reference desk and I'll order the book then. I haven't heard anything back.

So, any library getting a similar request can probably safely ignore it, as it is a dishonest sales pitch. It sounds like most library book vendors don't have it, anyway.

Not that this is unique to my library, but it did make me happy. There're at least six of us responsible for selecting books for the adult collection, and it's nice to know that, even without direct coordination, we're building a well-rounded collection.

It also reminds me that having a solid collection is at least as important as how you organize it; the books need to be there in the first place before better signage or search engines will have an impact.collection, collection development, libraries, library, public libraries, public library, purchasing, selection

One of the things I enjoy the least about being a librarian is doing selection - picking which materials to buy for the library's collection. Sometimes, though, an item comes along that obviously need to be purchased. Witness Disney's new "Let's Talk About Puberty" DVD set.